Blog 12_ Energy Waste

"Can you elaborate on your claim that net zero energy is currently being wasted", asks one voter?

Let's start by saying that electricity, once generated, is a matter of use it or lose it. The Grid can only accept electricity which can be supplied/consumed elsewhere.

There are, for the most part, two forms of electricity generation in Ireland - the fossil generators (mostly gas) and the weather dependent generators (wind and solar). What can happen is that especially, in the early morning, if the wind is blowing strongly and the demand is low, too much electricity is being supplied to the Grid. In response to this situation, the Wind operators are asked to turn off some supply (Note: there are other technical reasons why they they might be asked to reduce supply as well).

You might well ask why don't we turn off some of the state owned fossil generators instead? It turns out that we can't do that because those generating stations were designed for continuous use and can't just be turned off or on at the flick of a switch. If they were turned off and needed to be turned on again (if the wind dropped, say) then it could take several hours before they would be able to supply power to the Grid again.

So the wind operators are told to switch off and, from this year on, they get paid for this electricity which they don't supply ("constraint" payments). Guess who pays for this wasted electricity? The consumer pays. It is one of the elements contributing to our electricity bills.

There's potentially even worse to come. The wind operators have taken a court action against the Energy Regulator (CRU)'s decision not to allow them retrospective payments for constraints in previous years. If they win that case, a further hike in all electricity bills is likely.

In 2022, almost 8.5% of electrical energy from wind went to waste which amounted to 1,279 GWh. Let's for convenience call that 1,279 units. Now, you may have noticed numerous Opinion pieces in the media recently asserting that we can't connect any more Data centres to the Grid because it would result in the emission of additional CO2 into the athmosphere but - is this actually true?

Taking the average annual Data center consumption of electricity as 50 units, it rather looks as though, in theory at least , if instead of wasting electricity as above, another 20 or so data centre equivalents could in fact be connected, without the emission of a single extra molecule of CO2! An added bonus would be a reduction in all electricity bills.

Note: All Data center or other large user Grid connections must of course be prior approved by Eirgrid as to where, when, how, etc.)